Fiber-optic communication networks are currently at an increasing pace reaching closer to the end-users in order to meet the continuously growing demand for bandwidth. Ultimately, these optical networks reach all the way to the subscriber, i.e. Fiber To The Home (FTTH). Compared to networks already reaching the subscribers, such as telephony copper-pairs and cable-TV coax cables, introducing a new network is very costly. The costs related to FTTH arise from the active equipment, especially the optical components, and to a larger extent from the installation of the fiber network all the way to the subscriber.
In an attempt to lower the equipment cost, FTTH technology has been standardized in FSAN and ITU-T as GPON (see ITU-T G.984.1-5 Gigabit-capable Passive Optical Network (GPON)) and in IEEE as EFM (see IEEE 802.3ah, Ethernet in the First Mile (EFM). As regards the costly optical components, the costs have certainly been lowered with the higher volumes resulting from standardization but the components as such has not evolved in any fundamental way over the last 10 years. The optical sub-systems, such as the optical transceivers, are still made from rather bulky discrete components.
The installation costs are a main factor in the construction of a FTTH network. In order to lower the installation costs, the concept of Air Blown Fiber (ABF) and especially when it is performed by a single person, has been introduced (see e.g. Eric Quinby, Corning: “Air Blown Fiber Systems—A technical Discussion”, January 2005 and Ericsson Network Technologies: “Ribbonet System Description. Air Blown Fiber”, 28701-2/FBG101254 Uen Rev E 2006 Dec. 20). At present, micro-duct tubes are installed to the subscriber which is much less costly, error-prone and cause of fiber breaks. The fiber is subsequently blown by air-pressure through the micro-ducts. The conventional way in ABF is to blow fibers with optical connectors from the subscriber to a fiber concentration point (FCP). The FCP may in ISO/IEC 11801 terms be the building distributor (BD) or campus distributor (CD) points (see e.g. Ericsson Network Technologies: “Ribbonet System Description. Air Blown Fiber”, 28701-2/FBG101254 Uen Rev E 2006 Dec. 20 for system architectures of ABF systems).
Using fibers with prefabricated connectors lowers the cost of connecting the fibers in the field as it can be much more efficiently done at the factory site. However, to lower the time of the fiber blowing personnel being at and travelling in between subscriber premises, the concept of blowing a preferrulized fiber to the subscriber from the FCP has been proposed (see e.g. W. Griffioen, et al.: “Experience in Sweden with preferrulized cables blown to homes through 4/3 mm micro-ducts”, pp 41-48, NOC/OC&I'2007).